Singapore (CNN) – Nobody wants to be trapped abroad during a global pandemic.
But in his own words, 25-year-old Jon Lu, an American software engineer, chose to stay in Singapore when the world’s borders closed last year.
“I arrived in Singapore for the first time in August 2019, although my time was mostly spent working abroad,” says the New York resident. “I only really started living in Singapore in March 2020.”
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate says he had a choice of where he wanted to be on his one-year project in Asia.
Lu – a recreational figure skater who used to compete in peer competitions – was fluent in English and Mandarin and eventually chose Singapore.
He worked hard for the most part, practicing figure skating about four to five times a week. But he also did what Singaporeans do best: eat.
To date, the American has visited a total of 255 food and beverage outlets, including cafes and street vendors’ stalls, which together comprise 30 Michelin restaurants with 37 Michelin stars (55 Michelin stars including repeat visits).
An impressive feat, considering that the city’s restaurants were closed for personal dining for over two months, not to mention he was temporarily sidelined due to ill health.
When the city went into a nationwide partial lockdown – also known as the Circuit Breaker – from April 7 to June 1, 2020, eateries had to offer takeout only. That didn’t stop Lu, who continued to eat well by ordering food, not once but twice a day, for the first half of the period.
But these were no ordinary meals. He chose to focus on the city’s many gastronomic offerings, including Michelin-starred venues that often take weeks or even months to secure tables.
“It was such a difficult time for the F&B industry – I wanted to do as much as possible to help local businesses,” says Lu, adding that some of his most memorable Circuit Breaker meals were tasting menus designed for the home. . where he should finish the dishes himself.
“One of those meals was from Odette at Home,” says Lu, who even managed to get a tablecloth and a small potted plant from the staff at the hotel where he spent a month to build the famous French restaurant’s stand. re-create. his room.
Jon Lu, American software engineer
But in early May, Lu had problems with his vision.
Doctors determined that he had a retinal vein occlusion caused by extremely elevated LDL cholesterol levels – presumably a result of the foodie’s eating habits in the preceding seven-month period of vigorous travel and pre-lockdown eating.
It didn’t help that gyms and ice rinks were closed.
“I worked with local specialists to treat vision symptoms and started running every day,” says Lu. “I also followed a heart-healthy, low-cholesterol diet for two months, avoiding foods with moderate to high added sugars.”
After two months of dieting and running, Lu’s health problems were resolved. In July, just a few weeks after dining was allowed under the city’s second stage of reopening, he started filling his calendar with reservations again.
Lu’s best dining
American software engineer Jon Lu has dined four times at Michelin-starred Odette, led by Chef Julien Royer.
Jon Lu
After sampling Singapore’s best restaurants, a feat that even food critics would take a year or two to achieve, Lu is well positioned to offer advice on where to find the best food in town.
He joins his ranks of favorite Michelin-starred restaurants with Chef Julien Royer’s Odette having three Michelin stars, where Lu has eaten four times. He highly values the modern French restaurant for its “incredibly refined and technically well-executed” cuisine, headlined by Royer’s signature Pigeon “Beak to Tail” course, which “tastes great”.
In the Japanese category, Lu chooses the Sushi Kimura with a Michelin star, which he has visited twice. He says chef owner Tomo-o Kimura offers “thicker” and “more exotic” cuts of fish, such as sujiko (salmon roe bag), oki aji (white tongue jackfish) and usubu hagi (unicorn leather fish). Not to mention Kimura’s shari (sushi rice), which is “amazingly hearty and fluffy” and served at the “perfect temperature”.
When it comes to Singaporean cuisine, it’s Chef Han Li Guang’s Michelin-starred Labyrinth that draws Lu to the heart.
The restaurant is known for showcasing lofty versions of local dishes – such as the Signature Chilli Crab – that are unmistakably Singaporean in origin, using mostly local ingredients. Lu explains his November trip to Labyrinth, his second, as one of his favorite meals after the Circuit Breaker.
One of Lu’s best Japanese choices in Singapore is Sushi Kimura.
Jon Lu
Standout menus include the Ang Moh Chicken Rice and An Ode to Cairnhill Steakhouse, both of which pay tribute to Han’s grandmother and grandfather respectively.
Aside from Michelin-starred restaurants, Lu also makes a point of visiting new eateries. His favorite new opening, Euphoria, serves “gastro-botanical” dishes created by Singaporean chef-owner Jason Tan during his stay at the one-star Corner House.
“At the heart of Euphoria are four botanical essences made purely from vegetables,” says Lu. “I was very impressed with how delicious each dish was, especially the complexity of the flavor of the vegetable components.”
Despite his impressive coverage of reputable restaurants, Lu says he doesn’t believe in “star chasing” – that is, dining at a restaurant solely on the basis that it has been awarded Michelin stars. There are still 13 star restaurants in Singapore that he has not visited.
Its most visited location in Singapore, the two-year-old avant-garde restaurant Preludio, has no stars.
Run by Colombian chef Fernando Arevalo, Preludio serves ‘author’s cuisine’ revolving around an annually changing theme called ‘chapter’. From the first Monochrome chapter, Lu raves about the Pata Negra course with ‘amazing’ flavors, featuring breaded Iberico pork shoulder with panko crumb and a ‘distinctive’ blend of spices – cumin, cayenne and paprika – combined with tomatoes soaked a two-day marinade.
“As someone who usually doesn’t like to repeat dishes in fine dining restaurants, the fact that I’ve eaten at Preludio nine times (in 2020) is a testament to their inventiveness,” says Lu.
Inspired by “Chef’s Table”
Lu says eating out and exploring places to eat has been a hobby since 2015, when he interned in downtown Chicago and was surrounded by numerous eateries within walking distance of his office.
Since then, the avid food lover says he’s visited at least 300 different restaurants every year, starting with cafes and casual outlets, before graduating to finer venues in 2019.
Lu attributes his interest in fine dining to the Netflix series ‘Chef’s Table’ and says he was fascinated by the way the show portrayed food as a seemingly limitless art form, limited only by the skill and imagination of the chef.
The American says that Singapore has certainly been the ‘most impressive’ food city to date and that it is ‘entirely possible’ to eat out every day in a quality location without repeating meals for years.
“The variety of cuisines and the range of ingredients available (covering virtually every corner of the world) in Singapore is unbelievable,” says Lu.